


Dawn

by Kantrips



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Post-Trespasser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 08:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10805619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantrips/pseuds/Kantrips
Summary: Contentedly waiting for Cullen to wake one morning, Evelyn has time to reflect on some of the changes in their lives since the Winter Palace.





	Dawn

For the ninety-seventh morning in a row, Evelyn reached out to Cullen with a hand that was no longer there. With a groan at having forgotten again, she rolled heavily from her side onto her back, glancing towards her sleeping husband to see if the soft thump of her restless body had woken him. 

It had not: he slept on entirely undisturbed. She was relieved. She was disappointed. 

A golden ribbon of morning light blazed across Evelyn’s face. There was a conspicuous gap in the heavy drapes which she had failed to close properly the previous night. One-handed. 

Blearily, she raised a hand that wasn’t there in a protective gesture against the glare, attempting to shield her eyes from the dawn onslaught. A loud hiss of a curse escaped her lips as her upper arm bumped ineffectively against her cheek. Despite this, another furtive glance confirmed that Cullen yet slept. 

“You are alive. That is all that is matters, the only important thing,” he had reassured her after she had staggered back into the Winter Palace, pale and limp through the Eluvian, Cassandra’s firm grasp providing her with more support than her own spine. He was unrattled: a limb lost in battle was no shocking concept to a soldier. “You are alright. You will be okay,” he kept repeating as she shook in his arms, not making a sound, all the while her lips moved frantically. 

Burning somewhere in her core, residual anger and battle adrenaline urged her to shove him away. She was not alright. She would not be okay. Instead, she stood as he held her, tears she was unaware of rolling uninhibited down her cheeks until her inevitable collapse, the wound at her stump cauterized, but blood loss, pain and shock taking their toll. 

In the weeks that followed she hated that Cullen took the loss of her arm in his stride, hated his equanimity, and wanted to see her own frustrations reflected in him. It was like he barely even registered that it had happened except to be exceptionally and insufferably helpful. Evelyn meanwhile, found the sight of it made her stomach swim anxiously and she looked away while it was being dressed by the healer. It was unfamiliar, not her own, and it asked questions she did not want to answer.

Withdrawing, folding in on herself, she felt drained despite all the rest she was getting. All the while, Cullen stayed by her side.

When she was still bedridden, he had carefully cut up the plates of food that arrived for her without being asked. Anything she dropped was swiftly retrieved without comment. He noticed when she needed help without her asking and responded without ceremony: her boots were laced, her sleeve was pinned and disobedient strands of hair were swept back from her eyes as she struggled to hold onto her own staff. 

Wielding her staff, the hand grip worn down from use, once an action as familiar and unconscious as breathing had become a weighty, clumsy mess. Her weapon was a stranger to her. What remained of her arm grew noticeably thinner, and then her entire left side quickly lost muscle and strength, leaving her feeling increasingly unsteady and off-balance. She knew that she could adapt, that it was possible, but also that she would never be the mage she once was.

Sometimes she was driven to distraction by pain, impossibly it seemed to her, in the portion of her arm that was no longer there. Waking in the night she might yelp and try to clutch at the anchor which throbbed and sent violent cramps ricocheting up her arm until it felt like her chest was constricting. But there was nothing. No hand, no anchor. “A nightmare”, she would tell Cullen, a traitorous shake in her voice giving away more than she had intended. He would look at her like he didn’t believe her but would kiss the top of her head and murmur “That is my job”, into her hair. Evelyn smiled as the feeling dulled and would fall asleep as he held her, trying to ignore the thudding echoes of pain that had once been.

Sometimes, she might for a moment forget what had happened and try to raise her arm to wave, and for the rest of the day the space where it had been would buzz and hum with a feeling like the tingling of standing too close to a fire after being in the snow. 

Evelyn forgot less often now, and occasions of these strange sensations and phantom pains reduced accordingly. However it was always worst when she was tired, or had just woken up. 

In the early days after the loss of her arm, her feelings of impotence and uselessness grew unfettered. She wanted to be able to fight with her staff, not flail incompetently and need protection. She wanted people to speak to her, not greet her apologetically with eyes determinedly darting in every direction but at the space her absent limb left. She found herself wondering if the anchor truly had been the only thing that had made her the Inquisitor, a leader, anything.

Mostly she wanted her husband, not a nursemaid. All the while the urge to push Cullen away like a petulant child grew. Until one day she did.

A book had slipped from the top of a pile she was attempting to balance on her right hand and he was there before she even registered the fall, reaching to pick it up. Innocuous as the action was, and as entirely well-meaning as he was, something snapped. “Just leave it,” Evelyn had spat, in a voice that was barely her own. 

Frozen almost comically in a crouch, stunned mid-reach, he had twisted to look up at her face, searching and analytical, like she was a complex map, difficult terrain to be navigated: a problem to be solved. Defiance growing, Evelyn stared back, face blazing red with pent up irritation. 

Cullen rose and calmly approached her. He took her face in his hands, his touch gentle, his gaze steady, and she could feel the cool metal of his wedding band against the heat of her cheeks. As he examined her, she felt exposed and vulnerable, as stripped under his focused regard as she had the first night they spent together. 

“I won’t pretend to understand,” he spoke softly and evenly as if to calm an injured animal. “I never intended to make you feel smothered.” She couldn’t respond. All of a sudden, she did not know how. Her eyes slipped from his to the floor and he removed his hands from her cheeks. “I, of all people, know what you are capable of. Your independence, your determination. I know you feel like you are struggling, but nothing stops you, you have just kept going. Against all odds. Part necessity perhaps, but your own resolve...” He paused again and Evelyn felt her angry resolve crumbling at his proximity. His hand went to her chin and tilted her face towards his once more. Concern and affection radiated almost tangibly from his eyes, amber in the lamp light.

“Cullen -” she began but he cut her off.

“I need you to remember how much I respect you. I love you. You have seen me at my weakest, my worst. You have been my salvation and my strength. If I could be but half that for you -”

This time, Evelyn had interrupted him with a kiss, as books tumbled from her hand and thudded unheeded to the floor. Off-guard, he staggered backwards a step as she shoved herself against him, but he recovered quickly to steady them both and brace her with one arm around her waist, fingers splayed at the small of her back, while the other softly cupped the back of her head. 

It was not a kiss for the history books. Evelyn’s abrupt initiation saw her lips pressed against a surprised Cullen’s with an urgent forcefulness in which she frantically tried to convey apology, need and thanks. He pulled away to gasp and took another step back, breathless from being caught mid-sentence. His hand unfurled from her hair and he held her by her shoulders, taking deep breaths and looking down at her with bemusement, eyebrows raised. 

Evelyn made a fist in the fur of his surcoat and used it to pull herself closer to him, and higher, her eyes skimming over the rising pink on his neck as she kissed the skin there, more controlled now, and with featherlight touch. The bemusement slipped from Cullen’s face and his head tilted back for a moment almost involuntarily. Evelyn was enjoying having him at a disadvantage and nipped at his jawline, teeth gently grazing the skin. He retaliated by drawing her closer towards him by her hips and pressing his mouth to hers, running the tip of his tongue along her lower lip. She relented quickly with a moan, heart pounding, blood singing with adrenaline through her veins. 

Voices nearby had startled them and Cullen pulled away again, letting out a reluctant sounding groan from the back of his throat which Evelyn knew well from earlier, even more covert days of their relationship as the ‘we should stop or go elsewhere before stopping is no longer an option’ noise. 

“Alright,” she had murmured without him having to comment, and he had sighed heavily, with relief or disappointment she didn’t know. 

Still sprawled luxuriously in bed, Evelyn just managed to stop from sighing at the memory herself. She wasn’t feeling quite self-indulgent enough to justify waking Cullen intentionally that morning so kept quiet. It was her habit to wake before him, as she had always been a naturally early riser and it took her considerably less time to fall asleep than it did him. 

It was also true that he often lingered at his desk, late into the night, working away at one thing or another. She would try to tempt him to follow her to bed. Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes she did not. Sometimes he relented enough to follow her, but read by candlelight, propped up against the headboard while she dozed, draped across his chest. This reluctance to go to sleep of course, was to be expected when one had come to anticipate pained and restless nights. Though the nightmares came less frequently now, he would likely never be entirely free of them. 

And so they had fallen into their habits, she asleep and awake before him. He: adjusting blankets, a kiss on the forehead as she drifted off and watching her curl herself into a ball, listening to the occasional murmurs, all through the scant, silvery-blue light of the moon and she: watching the cool grey light of predawn turn rosy pink then golden as he sighed and stretched out his limbs in the last moments before waking, brushing back his thick, sleep-ruffled hair, her thumb across his cheek, a fingertip tracing the scar on his lip. 

While Cullen’s nights could be restless, once he reached a deep, dreamless state of sleep it took some effort to rouse him. Some nights, she knew without him saying, this truly restful slumber never came to him. 

But now his face was tranquil, his bare chest rising and falling steadily with each deep breath. He lay on his back, one arm thrown carelessly behind his head, underneath the pillow, the other flung in her direction on top of the sheet, palm facing upwards. She laced her fingers through his, the tips sliding across the familiar callouses, and his hand intuitively closed around hers in a loose grip. 

It was rare to see his expression so relaxed, prone as he was to wearing a fixed frown. Throughout the day this ranged from a true frown of irritation, to a contemplative frown while reading or concentrating. Given his love of work and propensity to always be contemplating one issue or another, the latter of these was difficult to avoid, though she often teased him now, when she caught a glimpse of that familiar glower. From the moment she had first met Cullen, every laugh she elicited from him had filled her with a warm rush of victory, and nothing had changed in this respect over the course of their relationship.

“What is the crisis?” she might ask, feigning deep concern.

“What?”

“You look so desperately troubled.”

He would reply sounding baffled at her alarm and point at his breakfast: “My eggs are overcooked.” Or he would look up from the bureau and say: “I am missing a sock.” Only when she began to laugh would he register the joke, laughing too as the luxury of having the opportunity to indulge in such concerns did not elude them.

“I am becoming as soft and domesticated as he is,” Cullen had recently complained pointing at his dog one morning. Plans to go riding had been abandoned as rain had set in that morning. After a few failed attempts, Evelyn was riding confidently while wearing a brace Dagna had designed, weighted on her left side in a way that helped her keep her balance on horseback. Mystifyingly, it also had runes inscribed into it, but to what end Evelyn had no idea.

“I thought you were insisting that he is a war dog, not a pet?” Evelyn had asked.

“No one seems to have told him that,” Cullen replied wryly, quickly followed by an exasperated cry of: “My sock!” when he saw that the dog was proudly holding his drool-soaked prize aloft. 

Disbanding the Inquisition was a consuming task: redirecting people and resources, consulting with members, and negotiating with allied forces. While their work was not as frantic now as it had been, they were yet busy. It would not always be so, and they both knew it. 

Not so long ago however, Evelyn had thought this eventuality unlikely, and more recently: impossible. At the Winter Palace, as the throb of the anchor intensified sharply, she felt a growing detachment from herself, her present, and every imagined future with Cullen. This detachment manifested itself as unflinching calm. Even as Cullen kissed her once, the barest of touches as she departed for the Eluvian, she felt nothing, looking at his anguish-lined face as if through a pane of thick glass. She was already dead, she realised, and he was kissing a corpse. 

To say she was surprised to have survived (again) was an understatement. To say she was grateful to be alive, for every moment like this one waking up by Cullen’s side, barely even scratched the surface. There had been challenges, but they paled in the face of her happiness. She might have said flippantly before it all, if asked, that she would have done anything to be rid of the anchor. Deep down she knew that was no less true, even now, and that she was lucky. For her life, for Cullen, and for her friends.

Entering the Herald’s Rest for the first time since returning from the Winter Palace, already slightly drunk, Dorian on one side, Varric on the other, the occupants of the inn fell into a subdued hush. “Don’t worry, I’m not armed,” she had announced, with a slight slur. There was a spattering of nervous chuckles, until Bull registered the joke with enthusiasm and the room fell into elated, celebratory chaos. 

Scratched into a table not long after, a caricature of Evelyn appeared in which the missing portion of her left arm had been replaced by the scaly claw of a dragon. It was signed ‘Red Jenny’.

Vivienne had asked her, in that way of hers that made it a statement not a question, whether the missing limb troubled her. “There are...occasional flickers of inconvenience,” Evelyn allowed herself to concede, knowing the kind of answer that was expected. Vivienne hummed approvingly, but was silent for a moment, looking at her over the rim of a goblet in a scrutinizing, cat-like way. Abruptly, the goblet went down and Vivienne was up, retrieving her staff from where it was leaning. She threw it from hand to hand as if testing the weight then addressed Evelyn with a pragmatic: “Shall we discuss your adjusted staff technique now then?” 

Cole had told her one day without prompting: “Stifling cloak woven of expectations and conviction. Hers? Others? To be helped is not to be weak. Stronger and kinder.” Looking at his earnest face, a shudder of sad recognition throbbed behind her ribs and she felt her fist clench around the anchor, even though neither was there.

A sudden shifting of the sheets, Cullen’s fingers tightening around hers, and a groan snapped Evelyn back to reality. Cullen turned his head to look drowsily at her, managing a slow, sleepy smile. “I am dreaming,” he muttered.

A bleary awakening was a sign of a good period of rest but Evelyn suppressed her own smile to instead say peevishly: “Considering the particular nature of some of your dreams I am going to assume that is an insult.” 

He closed his eyes and a long moment later, in a much clearer voice said: “Now I know I am awake: you are being too contrary for it to be a dream.” Evelyn replied with a tutting sound to the teasing, and he quickly added: “Your headstrong nature being one of the many reasons I love you of course.”

“You have become less charming since we were wed,” Evelyn said, still fighting a smile.

“We both know I was never very charming to begin with,” he countered, voice slightly muffled as he had released her hand so as to use it roughly scrub at his face, calloused palms making a rasping sound against stubble.

“All you ever needed to do was adopt that serious, no nonsense, Commander-y countenance of yours and my knees went weak.” Evelyn punctuated this with an exaggerated, swooning sigh. 

“Look serious? I was probably concentrating on not blushing around you.”

“Blushing? Why? What in Thedas were you thinking about?”

He responded by flicking his eyes over her form and grinning broadly at her. Evelyn very belatedly pulled the sheet higher about herself and he let out a low chuckle, prompting her to thump him ineffectually across the chest with the back of her hand.

“I am joking,” he assured her. “Truthfully, you just always had a way of making me very nervous, very quickly. Always when I least expected it.”

“That was not intentional. I was just being friendly.”

“Friendly?" Another laugh which was met with a narrow look. "I know. But you still do it sometimes.” 

“Half the Orlesian Court already seems to believe I coerced you into marrying me somehow and now you are making it sound like I intimidate you.”

“Intimidated? Making me feel deeply inadequate would be more accurate.” 

“Don’t you start that, it is too early,” Evelyn admonished. 

He gave her a mollified look. His features softened by the warm morning light, with sleep tousled hair, and sheepish expression Evelyn finally relented and let herself smile with a little exhale of laughter. Cullen looked fleetingly pleased with himself before his expression dissolved into a yawn. 

Evelyn took the opportunity to change the subject. “We need to talk about when you are going to stop being astonished to see me in your bed. We are married.”

“Yes, we are,” Cullen said in a way that made it sound like someone had just surprised him with a gift which made Evelyn’s whole body warm with affection. “Will you hit me again if I say that it just seems too good to be true?”

“Yes.”

“Just consider me slow to learn then. You’ll have to be patient, my love.”

“Not one of my strong points, darling.”

“Ah, you are baiting me again, aren’t you? I refuse rise to it: I do not wish to be in trouble this morning,” he said with a few rapid, defensive waves of his hands. 

“See? You _are_ learning,” she laughed.

They were interrupted by the dog, who after waiting patiently at the end of the bed, wandered closer to see why his people, while clearly awake, yet lingered in their recumbent positions. A dent in the soft mattress appeared where he rested his heavy head near Evelyn, giving her a hopeful look, tail thumping on the floor. 

Evelyn attempted to pet him with a hand that wasn’t there and let out another noise of frustration when her reach fell short. 

“Are you -” Cullen began.

“Fine. Just consider me slow to learn,” she answered quickly, echoing his earlier phrase. Turning to reassure him, she met his eyes, suddenly awake and searching. The corners of her lips curved into a small, contented smile. Cullen, mirroring her expression, shimmied closer, leaning to prop himself above her with one hand on either side of her torso. Evelyn felt a quickening of her pulse, and raised her head, eagerly tilting her lips towards his. 

The dog, yet unpetted and feeling left out, quickly jumped to place both front paws on the edge of the mattress. Body swaying with enthusiastic tail wagging, he loomed over Evelyn to make himself easier for her to reach, effectively blocking Cullen’s maneuver. Defeated, Cullen fell heavily back onto the mattress like a man downed by a blow. Letting out a huff of exasperation, he lay pressed close to Evelyn’s side with one arm still draped across her stomach. 

For the dog, such a behavior came very close to him being ‘on the furniture’, which was of course, strictly forbidden and would generally have been met with a stern reprimand. But neither of the contented people on the bed could raise the vigor to rebuke him at that moment so he settled himself, half laying on Evelyn’s chest, puffing hot, doggy breaths across the pillow in Cullen’s face. 

“I can see a new pecking order has been established,” Cullen mumbled.

Any movement made difficult by the weight of the dog on top of her, Evelyn nonetheless found herself laughing as her upper arm with a hand that wasn’t there gently ran back and forth across the short, but deceptively soft coat of the happy dog, while a hand that was there reached out to her sulking husband.


End file.
